Film Painting I


Rental Format(s): 16mm film

The last film made by LeAnn Bartok is a series of compelling portraits of subjects, some blindfolded, including three women who resemble each other as well as the artist, bearded, in a homage to Marcel Duchamp; all shot through cracked glass with an iris effect enshrouding them, many painting a window frame with a flower. It is an extremely evocative meditation on duality and hints at what further works on film might have been possible from Bartok had she continued in the medium.

"Then most mysterious of all, images of Jean Rowlands, sometimes blindfolded, but always smiling, seen in double exposure and a dark iris that focuses on her in the center of the frame, into which there appear -- one after another -- at least three more women who were cast because they resembled Rowlands. They are seen with the same iris, different blindfolds, and the same double-exposed layer of sparkling lights. There are other sequences in the film, including a brief shot of a book of Georgia O'Keefe's art that clearly offers a context for Bartok's vision. In one of the last images, Bartok dons a beard to reverse Duchamp's disguise as Rrose Selavy."
-- Robert Haller, from his book Crossroads: Avant-garde Film in Pittsburgh in the 1970s

After Film Painting I, Bartok would continue working in painting and sculpture for the rest of her career, but her films remain some of the most known works she created as a seminal member of The Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Rental Fees

  Fee  
16mm film $80.00  

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